


A Place to Start

by lunarlychallenged



Category: Misfits (TV 2009)
Genre: Between 2.07 and 2.08, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-11
Updated: 2018-09-11
Packaged: 2019-07-10 21:50:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15958226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunarlychallenged/pseuds/lunarlychallenged
Summary: Alisha knew that she had to fall in love with Simon, but finding a place to start was proving to be more difficult than she anticipated.





	A Place to Start

Alisha knew that she had to fall in love with Simon, but finding a place to start was proving to be more difficult than she anticipated.

She tried listening to his favorite music, but it was the sort of music that she imagined moping to while staring out a window.

She tried chatting with him over lunch, but he seemed more suspicious of her than anything. Kind, but afraid.

He found out that they would fall in love someday, and he seemed more intimidated by her than ever.

“It’s you falling in love with him that makes him become me.”

Of course, it was. Of-sodding-course. She needed him to be fearless, to be reckless, in order to fall in love. He would not be either of those things until she already loved him.

It wouldn’t be easy - her life never was.

 

 

Curtis had left with Nikki after only a drink or two, and Alisha thought that it had something to do with the way Nikki’s hand had disappeared under the table and Curtis’ face had tightened.

Kelly and Nathan had found people to go home with.

Alisha had not gone home with anybody for a long time, and Simon had carefully avoided the eyes of any of the women who might have tried to talk to him. It was getting a little late for them to be out, but she really wasn’t ready to leave his side yet.

“Look at him,” Simon said, nodding at a man in the corner.

“What about him?” He was alone, nursing the same drink he’d had for ages. He seemed like every other loner in the pub.

“Watch his feet.”

Alisha ducked her head to see under his table. At first glance, all she saw was a pair of grubby trainers. She might have given up, but Simon’s eyes glowed while he waited for her to react. The man was tapping his foot, and then she knew.

“Super speed,” she breathed.

“I’m not sure he even knows he’s doing it,” Simon said softly.

They watched the man’s foot vibrate against the scraggly carpet.

“What power would you have chosen?” She waited patiently while Simon checked to see if she was taking the piss.

“I’m not sure.”

“Come on,” she scoffed. “I know that you like sci-fi and superheroes and all that. I hear you talk about it. Have you really not thought about what you really wanted?”

He gave his beer a half smile. “I always wanted time travel, really.”

“Of course you did,” she said. They were both a little surprised that she sounded fond instead of exasperated. It made perfect sense that Simon, poster boy for fate, would eventually get exactly what he wanted.

It would break Alisha’s heart twofold, but it made sense.

“What did you want?”

The twist of her lips went bitter. “Shape shifting. I wanted to look however I wanted - to be whatever I wanted.”

He raised his eyebrows. “What did you want to be?”

“A bird. Or a blonde.”

Simon grinned then, and Alisha was sure that it was beers that made him say, “I think that your hair is perfect, as is.”

“You’d sound like a prick if you said otherwise.” Alisha bumped her foot against his, and he didn’t respond, but didn’t flinch away.

 

 

She invited herself over under the guise of seeing some of his video edits. They were, unsurprisingly, really good, but it only took a half hour before she couldn’t rationalize watching more.

Maybe Simon could see her desire to stay longer, since he offered to make tea.

Alone in his room, she couldn’t even pretend that this was the man who had travelled through time to save her. The man she fell in love with had those clocks, the polaroids, the lights that flickered eerily at all times.

The present Simon had everything pristine, but nothing intense. It looked like a bedroom out of a catalogue - she didn’t see any pictures on the walls or awards from school. This was not the home of the Simon she loved, but she felt an almost overwhelming rush of fondness for this Simon.

She wondered if he had ever imagined bringing a girl back here, and if he imagined what they would do in his bed. She wondered if he would want to do something to her in this bed, if things had turned out differently.

She wondered if she could have learned to love him, had things turned out differently.

When he returned with two mugs, she was looking at a poster filled with information about the solar system. His eyes were wary when he saw her. “My mum bought it for me.”

“Do you like learning about the universe?”

He was careful to avoid her skin when he handed off her tea, and she realized that he had known exactly how she took it. He had been paying attention. 

“Yes, always,” he said slowly. He gave her a wry smile. “I thought it was the place where the most amazing things were likely to happen.”

“Turns out Earth has more than enough,” she said, and laughed. “Who’d have thought?”

“Not me,” he said.

When she asked, he told her about places far, far away. He talked about planets raining diamonds and others that took a million years to travel around their Sun. She wondered if he was embarrassed about loving the universe, or if he had been afraid she would laugh at him for it. Neither seemed necessary.

 

 

“You really don’t have to walk me home,” she said. “It’s out of your way.”

It was late evening, and darkness had long since overtaken the city. It was no surprise that Simon had insisted on accompanying her home, but Alisha couldn’t help feeling guilty.

When she was younger, she had always known what it meant when boys walked her home. They wanted to kiss her at the door. They wanted her to invite them inside. They wanted to leave in the morning, satisfied, and probably never call.

She could not kiss Simon at the door. If she invited him in, it would be for tea. He would leave the same night, only satisfied if he had no interest in touching her.

“It isn’t out of my way, not really,” he said.

“Yeah? It isn’t anywhere near your flat.”

“I was going to a shop.”

Alisha smiled. “Are there no shops by your flat?”

Simon looked at the sidewalk, sheepish.

“Thanks,” she said. She glanced down at his hand, thinking that she might like to hold it. “Wait - are you really not wearing gloves?”

“No,” he said, raising a hand. The cold made it glow whiter than usual. “I’m fine.”

She frowned. “You look like you’re freezing.”

“I’m fine.”

Alisha appraised his hands, and once she decided her own gloved would be too small for him, stopped walking.

“Alisha, what -”

She grabbed his hands in her own, and raised them to her face. She carefully exhaled on his fingers, hoping to warm them a little. In another life, she would have warmed them with her cheeks. She might have pulled him in and kissed him, warming him from the inside out.

In this life, Alisha realized that she desperately wanted to kiss this Simon.

His eyes were wide, snapping from her lips to where her covered fingers gripped his. “I - you don’t have to -”

“I want to,” she said. She exhaled one more time, sighing, before dropping his hands. “We should keep going before it gets too cold. I don’t want you to freeze on the way home.”

She invited him in for tea. He left, eyes still wide and dazed. Alisha was not satisfied.

 

 

“You want to shag him, yeah?” Nathan waggled his eyebrows at her, ignoring her scowl. “Heaven knows why, but you aren’t exactly hiding it.”

“None of your business.” She picked at a ring on the bar, not caring what drink left it behind.

“Sure seems like it is. Look at poor Barry, stick so far up his arse that he’d always have to be a top. If you break him, I’ll have to pick up the pieces.”

She snorted. “Please. You’d break him even worse.”

“He’s not interested in shagging me,” Nathan said. “Again, Heaven knows why.”

Alisha glared at Nathan, sipping at her drink so nobody would look twice if they looked over. “If you tell him, I’ll kill you.”

“Why don’t you want him to know? You’re any guy’s wet dream.” He mimed wanking, lips curled in an arrogant grin.

“Because when he sleeps with me,” she said, thinking of the basement complex and everything she did there, “I want it to be real.”

“As long as his cock can penetrate, it’s real.”

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it. Now, will you keep it a secret, or not?”

Something bordering on soft flickered across his face. Not kindness, surely, but maybe sympathy. “You really like him.”

Yes, she did. Somehow, against all odds, Alisha’s heart sped up whenever Simon was around. It wasn’t his similarity to Future Simon - it was how careful he was to eat evenly sized bites of his evenly cut sandwiches. It was the time her hands had been full of bags, so he kneeled to tie her shoe for her. It was the fact that when somebody said something stupid, she could roll her eyes and look at him, and his eyes would shine when he smirked back.

“Yes. Please don’t tell him.”

“I won’t,” Nathan promised. For a split second, she almost appreciated him, but then -

“Maybe if you tell him that you want him to piss on your tits, he’ll get your point.”

Nathan spent hours complaining about booze going up his nose, but Alisha reckoned that he had it coming. He should have known that she would toss the drink in his face.

 

 

If Simon looked surprised to see Alisha walking with him again, it was nothing compared to his shock when she gave him a pair of gloves.

“You didn’t have to -”

“I wanted to,” she said. His lips twitched into a pleasant half smile, and she looked down sheepishly. “It’s nothing great, you know. They’re just gloves.”

“There’s nothing ‘just’ about them,” he said, and slipped them over his pale fingers.

She told him about Nathan making Kelly flash her tits at the bar the week before so he could leave without paying for his drinks, and the soft set of Simon’s lips betrayed his amusement.

“He barely got out,” Alisha said. “He stopped to check out her rack, and the bartender almost caught him.”

“He’s still hoping to shag her,” Simon said. 

“Cousins,” Alisha snorted. “Can you believe she said that? We all know she fancied him.”

“Maybe she was scared that he wouldn’t change - break her heart.”

Alisha glanced to the side, but his eyes were facing straight ahead. “Yeah, well, love changes people. I think he might have followed through. He would have tried, anyway.”

A few months ago, Alisha wouldn’t have been so sure about love changing people. Since then, she had memorized the signs that Simon was happy. She had always assumed before that he was seldom happy, since he seldom smiled, but she knew how to spot that glow of joy effortlessly. He made jokes now, and she almost always wanted to laugh at them. 

This cautious, slow-coming love was changing Simon, and it was changing Alisha. They both knew that she was talking more about them than about Nathan and Kelly, and Simon looked grieved by it.

Simon’s jaw clenched for a second. “You don’t have to do this, you know.”

Alisha frowned. “What do you mean?”

“The drinks, and the gloves - you don’t have to. Even if you don’t fall in love with me, I’ll go back for you.” Simon walked her up the steps to her door. “I would never let you die.”

She’d already fit the key into the lock, but she turned back to look at his stiff, averted stare. She raised a gloved hand and touched his cheek. He blinked, surprised, and Alisha smiled. “I get you drinks because I want an excuse to talk to you. I bought you gloves because I want you to be able to touch me. I know that you would go back for me either way; that’s why I want to do all this.”

He swallowed. “You don’t need an excuse to talk to me.”

“If you would stop questioning my motives,” she teased, “maybe not.”

She turned back to the door, biting her lip in irritation when the gloves made it difficult to turn the key. Her heart leapt into her throat when, without saying a word, Simon reached forward and let his fingertips brush against hers.

“What are you doing tonight?” Alisha licked her lips. “If you aren’t busy, we could go get a pizza. Some garlic dough balls, maybe.”

He gave a huff of almost laughter, and Alisha grinned while she opened the door. “Alright.”

“Give me a second to grab my bag,” she said, and the smile he gave her when she left was still there when she got back.

 

 

The difference between fancying Simon and fancying any of those other guys - aside from the fact that Simon was absolutely nothing like the other guys Alisha had liked - was the fact that she already knew how it would all turn out.

She didn’t like how it turned out, but at least she knew that it was safe to like him.

Simon offered her a quarter of his sandwich, and she handed him a beer in exchange. The park was quiet; it was too chilly for a picnic. Alisha had worn shorts, and she nearly regretted it, but the weight of Simon’s eyes roving over her legs made it worthwhile. 

“I could always bring my own lunch, you know,” she said. She felt a little bad about eating his lunch, but he never complained.

He shook his head. “You don’t have to. I’m not going hungry.” Then, with a playful smile, “I probably need to change my diet, anyway. Future me didn’t look anything like this.”

Alisha scoffed. “You don’t need to change a thing.”

“I do - if I’m going to protect all of you, I need to be able to handle the physical bits.”

She found herself giving him an almost predatory once over, and thought that she might understand why he had always looked so hungry when he looked at her when they first met. Alisha was used to being lusted after; she was not used to desiring another person like this. 

“I like you just the way you are.”

Simon gave her a disbelieving look; he didn’t look anything like the man she had so desperately wanted him to be. That being said, it was true. Alisha supposed that she still loved Future Simon, but it had more to do with the fact that she knew that he was the natural result of loving and being loved by this Simon. 

“Besides,” she teased, “if you need to trim down, I probably do too.”

He shook his head emphatically. “No. No, you’re perfect. Don’t change a thing.”

Alisha grinned. She took a napkin out of his lunch box, ignoring his confusion. She pressed the napkin against his lips, and kissed right over his lips. It was not anywhere near as satisfying as a real kiss, but it was the closest she could get to feeling how soft his lips really were.

Simon grinned when she pulled away, alight with surprise and pleasure. She made a mental note to see what else she could do to touch him - maybe one of her thin scarves or shawls would make a better barrier. Maybe something with handcuffs, she thought, watching the way his hands clenched a few inches from her thighs.

 

 

Alisha could not decide how she preferred the flat - with the clocks and the pictures, or with the plain decorations that she and Simon had chosen for themselves.

“The lights are so weird,” she complained absently while she made the bed. “I feel like I’m in a videogame.”

“It’s like the Batcave,” Simon said. The gentle pride in his voice made her add the Batman movies to her mental list of geeky crap to check out. He set of a line of pillows down the middle of the bed to act as a barrier between their bodies.

“Does Batman ever bring girls to the Batcave?”

“It’s a secret layer,” he said. “It isn’t a room for seduction.”

There was a second of strange silence. They both knew that Alisha spent a great deal of time down here, and they both knew that seduction had played a large part of it. It was impossible now, but it had been significant for a long time.

“Yes, well,” she said, clearing her throat. “There’s a first time for everything, yeah?”

“Right,” he said. It was clear that he was attempting at a light tone, but it fell flat. “A first time.”

Not a first time with him; it was a first time that had long since passed.

“It was still you,” Alisha sighed. “Still me and you.”

“It really wasn’t,” he said. His soft voice sounded near breaking, and Alisha longed to touch him. She wanted to slip her hand under his shirt to rub up and down his back, the way her mother used to do for her, or brush the hair off his forehead, or kiss the grief from his voice.

The best she could do was to put a hand on his clothed shoulder, but he flinched away from it.

“It doesn’t matter,” she tried. “Really, it’s you and me. Alisha and Simon, no matter when or how.”

“I hate this,” he whispered.

“Hate what?” Her, maybe, or the limitations of the love she could give. She thought that their relationship was going pretty well, all things considered, but it must be harder when he could easily leave the relationship to be with somebody who could give more.

“I don’t know what we are,” Simon said.

She gave a baffled half smile. “I don’t know what you’re going on about.”

Simon’s jaw ticked, and it took an active effort not to run her thumb over the bulge of the muscle there. “The only reason you’re with me is that somebody from the future told you that you would be. You would never love me if you hadn’t known that it was inevitable. You wanted him, not me.”

“That’s bullocks,” she said, and he looked almost disappointed - like he expected her to agree with him.

“It’s the truth.” He leveled her with a look, lips pursed. “I understand - just look at you. You deserve somebody who can leap off buildings and fight muggers. I’m not him; not yet.”

She crossed her arms over her chest, guilt and fury rolling through her in alternating waves. Had Simon been saying this a few months ago, he would have been right. She supposed that it was her own fault that he believed it even now.

“I don’t love you because he told me I would,” she said. “All he did was show me that I was capable of loving you. I love you because of who you are, Simon.”

“Love.”

“What?”

“You said ‘love’. Present tense.” His mouth was still in that thin line; he was too cautious to hope.

“Of course I did, you twat.” She rolled her eyes, but her tone was fond. “I’m mad about you. I have been for ages.”

He smiled now, eyes wide and bright. “You love me.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too,” he said, and there wasn’t an ounce of self-doubt or embarrassment coloring him. He was filled with a bright, unabashed delight, and Alisha realized that the Future Simon had been right.

Alisha falling in love with Simon was what made him change. The qualities she had been looking for had been there all along - she just had to learn to love the rougher parts of him before they came out.

She wished she could kiss him. She wished she could show him that she loved him the way she would have with any of her past boyfriends. It somehow felt just as intimate, just as passionate, when Simon ran his hands over the frizz of her hair. He was gentle enough that there was no risk of touching her, but she could have sworn that she felt the heat of his hands radiating through to her skin.


End file.
